She turned her eyes towards her followers as if to ask for help but she found in them a more intense reproach than the one she could direct to the sacred images. She felt how, all at once, this intruder had torn her people’s reverence and hope from her, how she appeared to them now in a garb of cheated illusions and inconsolable pain.

Suddenly the atmosphere became unbreathable. A sweat of agony impregnated everything; the lights began to dance, to merge with each other in capricious figures, in blossoming explosions. A wasp, a hundred wasps, a thousand wasps buzzed around her. The abyss opened its maw and vertigo threw her into it. The fall begins and goes on and on but it will never end. A woman, Catalina Díaz Puiljá, collapsed, unconscious. Those closest to her were aware of it but no one dared go to her aid. All of them had their eyes fixed on Padre Manuel who was still gesticulating, still haranguing with even greater intensity. Finally, he seized the hyssop, plunged it into holy water, and asperged the stone figures, the walls of the cave and the petrified crowd to chase away the demons that had taken possession of them.

Padre Mandujano left Tzajal-hemel with his conquered booty. No one opposed him when he dragged the idols out of the cave, across the ignominy of a plaza covered with rinds, residue, trash. There were even those who offered to carry them to Chamula, and later to Ciudad Real.

Padre Manuel presented himself before His Excellency with his evidence and with a witness to his triumph: Xaw Ramírez Paciencia.

Don Alfonso listened to the narration of the episode, distracted and indifferent. No, he could not share the alarm of the priest and the sacristan, who considered it an indicator of something whose nature, seriousness and extent they were unable to determine.

“The Indians’ idolatry is not bad faith, it is ignorance,” was the opinion he rendered. “And who is more responsible for that state of things than us? A great effort must be made to remedy it.”

But Padre Manuel was not disposed to yield his prize so easily; he had achieved a magnificent pretext for leaving San Juan and he was not going to return there on an apostleship whose difficulties he was well acquainted with and whose absurdity no one could ever again refute.

“This matter is not our concern alone, Your Excellency. The civil authorities must also be made aware of the facts.”

“What do they have to do with the Indians’ nonsense?” was the Bishop’s indifferent reply. “They may only blow it out of proportion in order to make themselves look important. Or they’ll encourage it. The civil authorities are our enemies.”